In Memory Of
by Teddy R. Lupin
Summary: Remus Lupin has lost many people in his life to a cruel twist of fate.  And not all of them has he lost to death.  This follows a Remus who writes an infinite letter to a woman he loves through October 1981 to May 1998.  Implied JP/LE and later on RL/NT.


Hello there! Well, I had just started going over a story I wrote for my English class a while back (in which I needed to use 90 vocabulary words) and I thought to myself, "Huh. This would make quite an interesting fanfic." So here we are. The first part I left the same, so some of it may not make much sense.

And on that note...this is going to need a bit of clarification. The italicized parts - except for the parts in quotations, which are meant to be used to stress a word or two - are parts of a letter that Remus is writing to a woman he loves. Bear in mind that this is back in the day, at least for now, so he obviously has no feelings for his future wife. Everything will stay canon (I debated about that one for a bit), but this will basically be the diary of Remus John Lupin in the form of a letter.

It will go from this chapter to the time of his death (as much as the latter saddens me).

-HARRY POTTER-

_It was only a short time ago when I realized that somewhere down the line, I had corrupted myself; I had fallen prey to every evil that I had sworn to myself that I would never give in to. I thought, all those years ago, when I was a young fool, I could do nothing wrong; I was invincible. I was too strong and too smart to just look past those things that my friends and I considered to be simply human defects._

_And that pride, that __supercilious__ manner is what caused all of this to happen to me. _

_I suppose you're curious about what exactly I mean. I suppose that the ideas formulating in your mind may be close to__ infinite__, but I promise, by no means is my story close to one of those adolescent thoughts I know to be floating around somewhere in the depths of your brain. _

_If you're expecting a simple answer, I'm afraid I cannot give one. I've tried to ask myself the questions I thought I'd get from you, but if the answers I would give myself were not __complacent__; how, then, could they be satisfactory for someone as worthy as you? The truth of what I am has been debated amongst the brightest philosophers, the youngest of children, and the wisest of wizards. But despite their education, despite their personal beliefs set aside, there is no definition for who or what I am. _

_I am a man._

_I am a beast._

_I am, in the eyes of society, nothing._

_I am, in the eyes of those who matter most to me, everything._

_It may sound __incredulous__, and you must no doubt be lost now, if I hadn't already left you laying somewhere out on the dangerous path that, for now, is my life. If I am a man, you ask, then how can I be a beast? Is that not a paradox in itself? Despite the belief of those around us, despite those who are legally allowed to call themselves human, are they not the beasts themselves? _

_How can they pretend to be civilized beings, when one of their own is locked in the cellar beneath a dining hall, for something that is beyond his very mortal control? How can we be treated less than them, for a bite that we have been cursed with, for a fate that we have been subjected to? _

_But I have been lucky enough to live as long as I have; to have experienced love __reciprocated__, to have experienced the joy that every child feels on Christmas morning. _

_And with this I will begin to tell you, my dear, as much as it pains me-_

Hearing a commotion from the ground above, I scrawled out a quick apology.

_I must make haste. I will write again later, but I can only take shots in the dark at when exactly 'later' will be._

"Lupin," a snarling voice came from the stairs, and I grimaced, shoving the letter into the filthy overnight bag that I had rummaged out of the remnants of my parents' home. I had taken care to keep my quills, ink, and parchment at the very bottom of the bag as to avoid suspicion. If it were to come out that I was writing to…well, someone…not like me, it was likely they'd soon be joining me here, in the pits of hell, cursed for the rest of their not-so-human life.

"Fenrir," I said with the most politeness I could muster. His rancid breath reeked of death, and I did all I could not to shudder at the leader of the pack. But there was something else. He was…_gleeful_. Something that I'd never associated with…people like me, much less a Death Eater wannabe like Fenrir Greyback.

Something had happened.

Something big.

_And indeed…it was something…it was a moment I would never forget._

For a moment, indeed, I wanted to feel glad. But I knew that I wasn't on his side. No matter what Fenrir believed, no matter how much I tried to convince myself that it was better this way (and in doing so, convincing him that I was one of them), deep down…in my heart…I knew that it wasn't.

"He's gone," was all I heard from a young man who I had taken a liking to. Not enough, of course, to trust him with who I really was (or maybe, just who I wanted and believed myself to be). His voice was full of surprise and partial disbelief. I didn't believe him for a moment. Voldemort couldn't just…be…gone. We (the Order of the Phoenix, that is) had been fighting to bring him down for years. His power continued to grow, and it seemed at times that he was beyond a mortal man…that he didn't have enough humanity within himself to die. "You-Know-Who is gone."

I felt strangely light. Jubilant, even. "How?" The dreaded question slipped from my lips before I even knew if I wanted to know the answer.

"The Potter boy," came Fenrir's customary growl. "But what would you care? The Dark Lord's gone."

The Potter boy. James? But no, James was not merely a boy. Compared to Greyback himself, James would seem awfully young. And the only other "Potter boy" would be a happy baby with jet-black hair and almond-shaped emerald eyes. James and Lily's son. But Harry was only over a year old. He couldn't have possibly defeated the most powerful Dark wizard of all time, could he?

_Maybe all this time I've spent with the colony has taken its effect on my magical abilities at last. Maybe I'll just tell Albus that I simply cannot do it anymore._

_But then, my dear, a thought struck me._

_Voldemort was gone. That meant the Order of the Phoenix was disbanded…and I no longer had a reason to be here, in this dreadful place._

_I had pledged, had I not? How could I leave, how could I (dare I write this) run away as a coward would?_

_Still…something bothered me. Those same words came back to me…the Potter boy. What could those words mean? My heart thudded in my chest, and for the first time in…at least a year…I felt human again. _

_But after I heard what Fenrir said next, it would be a long while before I felt remotely human again._

"What the rumour is…is that the Potters, the long-time supporters of that crackpot Dumbledore's supposed resistance movement-"

"The _Order of the Phoenix_," I muttered through gritted teeth, all the while praying to whatever god exists that none of these…people – _I would call them monsters, but would that not be the fate I was trying to desperately escape?_ – had not heard my quiet slip-up.

"Well, they're dead."

-HARRY POTTER-

Vocab words (I know they're easy...): _supercilious , infinite , complacent, incredulous, reciprocated_

So please tell me what you think, I've never done something like this before, so I'm really curious to see what people think of it. I hope it wasn't too confusing for any of you.

And if there are any specific parts from Remus's life after James and Lily's death that you would like to see me write about, tell me, and I'll try to make it happen. No, I'm not going to tell you who it is he's writing to, but it'll be a twist at the end if nobody guesses it. I guess I'll just say that the beginning won't exactly make much sense, but hey, this is kind of adapted. And a lot of this is my own personal interpretation of Remus's life...a lot of it is guesswork.

Thanks, you guys! You're all brilliant!


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